Vietnam War Protests: 40 years later, part 1 of 3

A wave of shock rippled through the 4,000 students standing on the Quad facing Hendricks Chapel. A professor announced four students from Kent State University had been shot by federal authorities for protesting the Vietnam War.

“It was a remarkable moment, in the way that a wave will pick up steam and come at you on the shore,” said Robert Tembeckjian, spokesman for SU’s Student Strike Committee at the time. “There was a ripple of dropped jaws and people putting their hands on their heads. It was passing over the entire crowd and there was a collective gasp at the announcement that students had been shot by federal authorities on a college campus just like ours.”

It was May 4, 1970. And students at Syracuse University, like those at universities across the country, had gathered together to protest the Vietnam War. Though groups such as the Student Strike Committee had protested the war since the beginning of the school year, the mood, the protests and the students’ grievances shifted after that announcement, said Larry Elin, a freshman at the time and now a professor at Syracuse University. And 40 years later, those involved can still remember the atmosphere and activism that encompassed the SU campus.

In the days following the deaths of the Kent State students, SU students effectively shut down the university for the remaining two and a half weeks of the semester. Students barricaded the entrances to the university, took over the administration building for 32 hours, marched from campus to Salina Street and even burned an effigy of then-President Richard Nixon in front of the Newhouse complex.

Practical concerns such as how students would be graded and what would happen at graduation were addressed, but the main concern of both the Student Strike Committee and the administration was how the students could get their message across while keeping things peaceful. The Kent State killings could not be repeated at SU.

“To demonstrate the concern of the university and following consultation with the chancellor’s emergency council, all classes for the balance of today and for tomorrow will be canceled,” read a statement from Chancellor John Corbally released on May 5. “I urge that our entire community support this decision so that we can avoid incidents so prevalent on other campuses this week and can preserve the academic integrity of Syracuse University.”

And, for the most part, violence was avoided. Things were peaceful — but they weren’t calm. The students were not OK with what had happened at Kent State, and they were not OK with the Vietnam War. They needed to make sure those concerns were heard.

Elin said he remembers bonfires, gatherings and demonstrations all across the Quad, all the time.

“We had the freedom to speak, the freedom to be angry at things and the freedom to organize,” he said.

Before coming to campus in the fall of 1969, Elin didn’t know much about student activism at all. He had gone to Catholic school all his life and was naïve to the protests and events actually happening, he said. But from the moment he stepped on campus, he was brought into the whirlwind of the Vietnam protests that would come to a peak that following spring.

“The minute I got on campus, when I opened the door of my dorm room, people had been shoving fliers under the doors,” he said. “The first one I picked up said ‘F*ck War’ with a big fist. I hung it up. This was the first time I had ever seen the word ‘f*ck’ in print, and I thought, ‘OK, this is a different place that I’m in now.’”

Breaking the barricades

Bottles, benches, wooden planks, scaffolding and anything else students could find remained as a barricade in the driveways leading up to the university from around 1:30 a.m. on May 5, all the way through commencement about two weeks later, The Daily Orange reported.

The construction of the barricades was a spontaneous act by students after the rally on the Quad on May 4, Tembeckjian said. The Student Strike Committee set up 24-hour rotating shifts for its members to watch over students at the barricades to make sure nothing got out of hand, he said.

For Tembeckjian, one incident summed up the peacefulness of the SU protests perfectly.

One night during the protests, a fire broke out at the stone observatory, then located on the driveway between Maxwell and Tolley. There was construction going on there at the time, and one night some propane tanks at the construction site led to a small fire. The fire department needed to get up the driveway quickly, Tembeckjian said, but they did not want to meet a confrontation with students by breaking down the barricades.

Tembeckjian and other members of the strike committee, along with the police chief and Chancellor Corbally, quickly convened in Corbally’s office. The group decided the students who constructed the barricades would quickly take them down, the fire department would put out the fire and the students would put the barricades back up. No confrontation would happen.

And it all went according to plan.

“The story of the strike at Syracuse was that it was peaceful and respectful on both sides — students and faculty,” Tembeckjian said. “The barricades episode with the fire department is an emblematic example of how respectful and cooperative the student leadership and the administration of the university were with one another.”

That safety couldn’t have been possible without the cooperation of Syracuse Police Chief Thomas J. Sardino or Chancellor Corbally. No police officers ever came onto campus dressed in uniform because they did not want to seem confrontational to the students. Any police officers that did come on campus were always dressed in civilian clothes, Tembeckjian said.

“He was very protective of the students,” Dale Tussing, an associate professor of economics at the time, said of Sardino in an e-mail interview. “He entered the administration building, too, spent the night there, and made sure the students who seized the building were not prosecuted or penalized. He kept their identities from university personnel. If you find anyone to talk to about the student strike, they will tell you that Chief Sardino was a hero.”

Robert Gates and Jerry Miner, both professors at the time, agreed that Sardino and Corbally’s handling of the protests was what kept things from getting violent.

“I think we were fortunate in that the local police and the college administration tried to keep things relatively calm and under control,” Gates said.

But many members of the community, Miner said, were unsatisfied with the chancellor’s handling of the protests. They thought he didn’t react vigorously enough to the protests. Corbally left the university the following year.

The takeover

David Bennett, a professor of history still at SU, remembers receiving a call from the vice chancellor at 3 a.m. the week of the protests. It was Thursday, May 7, and about 75 students had just taken over the administration building.

The students took over the building because they wanted money from the university for the release of two members of the Black Panthers being held in New Haven, Conn., Bennett said.

“So, I’m driving down and there’s a big barricade being built,” Bennett recalled. “I see kids wearing big German helmets, they’re all waiting for a police bust. So I go into the administration building and there’s so much pot being smoked. They’re on the steps and they’re all over the place.”

Although the students remained peaceful, they were suspicious of any administrative or faculty members who wished to enter the building. Tussing said he remembers himself and fellow professors trying to enter through the basement of the building. The students kept asking who they were and refusing to let any of them in, he said.

But Tussing, as an activist himself and supporter of the students, was able to gain access into the building.

“Professors’ names were shouted out through the door, and students kept saying ‘No, never heard of him. No, never heard of him,’” he said. “I was something of an activist and when my name was shouted out through the door, the students said ‘Oh, if Dale Tussing is there, let them all come in.’”

The strike lasted for 32 hours, with acting Provost Ralph Galbraith negotiating an end, The Daily Orange reported on May 9, 1970.

Striking symbolism

The protests went deeper than direct action such as barricading or marching. And it certainly went beyond just a small group of student activists.

The SU lacrosse team was scheduled to play a game against Army in the weeks following the Kent State deaths. The team, to show its feelings on the war, planned to wear black armbands during the game.

The campus had shown discontent with the military even before the Kent State killings. On May 4, 1970, student activists sent out a flier demanding direct action against the ROTC program on campus.

“We must move to destroy those parts of the university which are placed beyond our control that create violence thousands of miles away,” the flier read. “There is no such thing as neutrality when one lives in a country that is committing an atrocity.”

Due to the clear opposition from both SU’s lacrosse team and the rest of the campus community, the Army coach ended up canceling the game because he feared for his players’ safety, The Daily Orange reported.

In a more direct symbolic action, students burned an effigy starkly resembling President Richard Nixon in front of the Newhouse complex on May 6. The leader of the group began the burning by shouting, “We the people hereby find Richard Nixon guilty of genocide,” The Daily Orange reported.

School’s out

That May, students were given the options of taking their current grades in their classes, taking a final exam, if offered, and taking an incomplete in the course, among other choices. Many students simply chose to go home.

“When classes were suspended, most students went home,” Tussing said. “There were about 3,000 students left on campus. I think most professors stayed around. There were teach-ins, lectures, rallies and things like that.”

Many professors chose to have lectures and discussions on the Quad. Some turned the classroom into a venue to discuss the issues at hand.

Although the memories of those at SU during those weeks 40 years ago may be blurry, the feeling and atmosphere of that tumultuous time remain.

“There was definitely a — I guess the right word is — a very revolutionary feeling going on,” Elin said. “It was chaotic. It was anarchy. There wasn’t anybody in charge. For a kid like me it was a very exciting time. It was thrilling to be a witness to it.”

— Asst. News Editor Beckie Strum contributed reporting to this article.

Editor’s note: The branding on this article was The Daily Orange’s flag in 1970 during the protests.

Published on April 28, 2010 at 12:00 pm